Traditional prayer
The Act of Spiritual Communion
My Jesus, I believe that Thou art in the Blessed Sacrament.
I love Thee above everything, and I long for Thee in my soul.
Since I cannot now receive Thee sacramentally, come at least spiritually into my heart.
As though Thou wert already come, I embrace Thee and unite myself entirely to Thee;
allow me not to be separated from Thee.
Jesus, my good, my sweet love,
Wound, inflame this heart of mine.
So that it may be always and all on fire for Thee.
About this prayer
The Raccolta of 1910 prints this as the “Act of Spiritual Communion of Saint Alphonsus Liguori” (no. 104), indulgenced on 30 June 1893. Father Lasance’s prayer book of 1908 gives another English version of the same act under the saint’s name, beginning “My Jesus, I believe that Thou art truly present in the most blessed sacrament” and ending “never, never permit me to be separated from Thee” (p. 509). The familiar wordings you may know differ slightly; the desire is the same.
St. Alphonsus Liguori (1696–1787) founded the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer in 1732, was canonized in 1839 and declared a Doctor of the Church in 1871. His first book was a small volume of Visits to the Blessed Sacrament (Catholic Encyclopedia, 1907).
What a spiritual communion is: the Baltimore Catechism defines it as “an earnest desire to receive Communion in reality, by which desire we make all preparations and thanksgivings that we would make in case we really received the Holy Eucharist” (No. 3, Q. 912). Lasance adds that no particular form is required, and offers the simplest: “Come, dearest Jesus, come into my heart; come and satiate my longing; come and sanctify my soul; come, my sweetest Jesus, come.”
It does not replace the Mass or the sacraments, and it is never a reason to stay away from them. It is for the days the altar is truly out of reach: the weeks after childbirth, a sick child at home, an illness of your own, a great distance. The obligation of Sunday Mass gives way only to a serious reason, such as illness or the care of infants, or to a dispensation from your own pastor (CCC 2181). Where Mass is possible, a spiritual communion does not take its place. And it is for any Mass at which you do not receive. If grave sin is the reason, the act belongs on the road to confession.
Behind it stands Christ’s promise: “He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, abideth in me, and I in him” (John 6:57, Douay-Rheims; 6:56 in modern Bibles).
When to pray it
- When illness, a newborn, a sick child or another serious reason keeps you from Mass.
- At Mass when you do not receive Holy Communion.
- During a visit to a church or at adoration.
- Through the day: Lasance counts any moment God inspires the desire, especially at Mass, at Benediction and at visits to the Blessed Sacrament.
Any indulgences named on this page are those recorded in the older prayer books it cites. Pope Paul VI reformed the Church's indulgences in 1967 (Indulgentiarum Doctrina); the current rules are in the Church's Enchiridion of Indulgences.